"We need an AI strategy." That's not a strategy — that's anxiety dressed up as planning. And it's the conversation happening in most boardrooms I sit in right now.
What they usually mean is: we need to be seen doing something with AI before our competitors do. The operators I've watched do this well start somewhere different. They start with the problem, not the technology. They ask "where are we slowest, most error-prone, most reliant on manual judgement?" and then look at whether AI can address that specifically.
Where I'd have deployed it at Revolut
At Revolut, speed of execution was always how we won. If AI had been as capable then as it is today, the places I'd have deployed it first wouldn't be customer-facing — they'd be internal. Compliance review. Risk modelling. Localisation. The unglamorous operational work that compounds over time.
Why depth beats speed
The operators who will win the AI era aren't the ones who move fastest. They're the ones who make the most durable choices — who embed AI into their core operations in ways that are hard to unwind and impossible to replicate quickly. Depth beats speed; integration beats novelty.
Where to start
If you're thinking about where to start: find the workflow in your company that is highest-frequency, most rule-bound, and most expensive when it goes wrong. That's your first deployment. Everything else follows.